Thinapp

3 options to know of in Package.ini (for win7 installs, 1 user per desktop, etc):


MSIDefaultInstallAllUsers=0
MSIRequireElevatedPrivileges=0
// This makes the currently logged on user to simply and silently install the msi
// Wow! This is 2 years old?
MSIStreaming=1 - see kb.vmware.com/kb/1028385

// With this you can create an MSI that allows steaming and full install too.

Also http://blogs.vmware.com/thinapp/msi/ is a nice source for info.
Cheers!

VMware View and Windows 7 WGA / WAT

Wow. I haven't write a single line since a few months. Been busy I guess.
So. Currently I am playing with View 4.6 (and some other things covered by NDA :))
The worst part about creating a windows pool currently is Windows Genuine Advantage or Windows Activation Technologies. You have basically 4 ways of getting an activated - Windows 7 - pool:

• MAK - Multiple Activation Key. This Works, but You are slowly killing Your key counter every time You provision a new desktop.
• KMS - Key Management Server. The preferred way both by MS and VMware. We'll see this one below.
• OEM Image - With some BIOS hacks (I am not sure of this one), You probably can install a Win7 OEM that won't kill activation after a QuickPrep/Sysprep.
• Some nicely "prepared" windows, for example with ChewWGA. We should not speak about this :)

About the KMS part. You have to install a KMS key on a Windows computer to use this. See MS Technet articles at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff793419.aspx. About it's not so rare faults, You can read at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/938450. There is a big limitation about KMS, that affects VMware View: You have to install/provision at least 25 Desktops (Vista or 7), to have the KMS activate them. The number of desktops waiting to be activated can be queried with slmgr.vbs -dli. This causes error 0xC004F038, the one I found most annoying. It means, that You don't (yet) have the required number of desktops (>=25), to have them activated by Your KMS service. If You try to just provision 10 for example using Quickprep, they will fail to leave Customizing state and enter Available state.
This happens, because QuickPrep, by default, tries to KMS activate after changing the SID, and will get into a 10 minutes retrying loop if slmgr service on the cloned desktop encounters the error mentioned above. If You provision at least 25 at once - first time speaking of course - this won't happen.
To circumvent this failure of QuickPrep, VMware distributed a Knowledge Base article: kb.vmware.com/kb/1026556. It says You can disable the KMS activation part of QuickPrep, and skip activation completely, or do MAK for the slowly killing thing. The windows will try to activate itself of course, but at least will be in available state in the View Manager. After You have this, You can KMS activate Office 2010 too, a nice howto is at blogs.technet.com. If You setup the KMS server to know about office too (1meg patch, here), it will work automatically.
That's all folks...